Sovacool et al.'s analysis of our paper contains numerous errors, misinterpretations, and dubious assumptions. For instance, we make no presumption in our paper that nuclear power is the only major option to replace fossil fuels nor have we in the past, as evidenced by our other peer-reviewed publications. Furthermore, all of our results are based on complete fuel cycle analysis and are presented as mean values along with their ranges. Thus it is incorrect to claim that we single out the worst estimates for coal mortality. Contrary to Sovacool et al.'s assertions, our only bias is our belief that humanity's best chance of success for mitigating the daunting challenge of climate change is to utilize all available and proven means

Hansen, James

Kharecha, Pushker A.

NASA Technical Reports Server

Response to Comment on “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas
Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power”
Sovacool et al.1 begin their critique of our recently publishedpaper2 by claiming that nuclear power is unable to displace
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as eﬀectively as energy
eﬃciency measures and renewable energy technologies in the
near term. However, much of their rationale reﬂects the
common misconception that the electric energy produced by
diﬀerent electricity sources is interchangeable. For near-term
mitigation of climate change and air pollution, fossil fuel
sources of base load power such as coal and natural gas (i.e.,
those that can provide essentially continuous power) are most
eﬀectively replaced by proven alternative base load sources such
as nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and properly (sustain-
ably) designed biomass energy (e.g., see ref 3). This is rooted in
the fact that wind and solar photovoltaic energy sources are
inherently variable and therefore cannot provide base load
power.
These issues are highlighted by the consequences of
Germany’s recent decision to phase out its nuclear power
production by 2022 following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear
accident. Despite a major, laudable expansion of wind and
solar power in recent years, Germany’s nuclear phaseout has so
far led to an increase in coal burning and an associated increase
in national GHG emissions4,5a disappointing outcome, given
the government’s stated intentions to reduce GHG emissions.
(It has also led to a signiﬁcant increase in Germany’s electricity
rates.4) While the emissions increase has been modest so far, it
could become substantial in the mid- and long-term, due to the
typically multidecadal lifetime of fossil fuel-ﬁred power plants.
Many of Sovacool et al.’s assertions regarding the various
costs of nuclear power rely on their Table 1. With the exception
of column two, the values in that table are, at best, misleading.
For instance, the 0−4.1 gCO2/kWh range for nuclear power in
column four (sourced from coauthor Jacobson6) represents
GHG emissions from the incineration of megacities due to
hypothetical nuclear war; this purely speculative estimate
appears to reﬂect the common and irrational conﬂation of
nuclear power with nuclear weapons. More importantly, the
“opportunity costs” for nuclear power listed in column three
(which substantially exceed the life-cycle emissions listed in
column two) are based on another set of highly dubious
assumptions by Jacobson6namely, that it takes 10−19 years
between planning to operation for a nuclear reactor, and, as a
result of this delay, continuing fossil fuel GHG emissions from
the electricity sector are assigned to nuclear power. This
approach, based solely on the U.S. experience, is immediately
undermined by simply considering the example of France: in a
period of just 10 years (between 1977−1987), nuclear power
production in France experienced a ∼15-fold increase that led
to its share of electricity rising from 8.5% to over 70% (based
on ref 7). Thus, under the right conditions it is not inevitable
that the international construction of nuclear plants will face
long delays.
Other key values given by Sovacool et al. in their Table 1 also
lack credibility. Their mean emission factor for nuclear power
in column 6 is much higher than the mean/median emission
factors given in more reputable sources such as the review
papers we cite8,9 and Figure 9.8 of the IPCC’s 2011 Special
Report on renewables.10 And for more balanced and mean-
ingful analysis of capital costs and levelized costs of electricity,
we refer readers to Table 1.9 of the Global Energy
Assessment11 and Figure 4.27 and Table 4.7 of the most
recent IPCC assessment report on mitigation.12 In essence,
peer-reviewed sources that are far more authoritative and
credible than Sovacool et al. (and most of their sources) reveal
that current as well as projected life-cycle emissions and
levelized costs of nuclear power are broadly comparable to
those of renewables.
While it is true that our analysis of societal eﬀects of nuclear
power focused mainly on mortality and morbidity and not on
property damage or evacuations caused by accidents, Sovacool
et al. erroneously claim that we ignore the issues of waste
disposal and proliferation. To the contrary, we mention these
issues in the second paragraph of our Introduction.2 But
because they are not directly relevant to the subject of our
paper (e.g., proliferation-related mortality is not meaningfully
quantiﬁable, as we note), we referred readers to a prior peer-
reviewed publication of ours in which they are covered in some
detail.3 As we discuss therein, these issuesalong with the
impacts from continuing uranium mining and enrichmentare
largely resolvable by next-generation nuclear reactor designs,
some of which have been successfully demonstrated at relatively
large scales.
Sovacool et al. next discuss the role of nuclear power in
developing countries and imply that small island nations and
the least developed countries are ill-equipped to possess nuclear
reactors. But nowhere in our current or prior work do we
suggest that those countries should construct nuclear plants in
order to mitigate global climate change and air pollution. Most
developing countries contribute very little to these problems
and are not projected to become large-scale nuclear power
producers. China and India are another story, however; they are
now, respectively, the largest and third-largest emitters of CO2,
overwhelmingly due to the massive increase in their coal usage
over the last few decades (see Figure S3 of our paper2 and ref
13). Thus it makes great sense for at least these two developing
countries to pursue the ambitious nuclear energy agendas they
have announced, given the proven ability of nuclear plants to
directly displace coal-ﬁred plants. And because they will almost
certainly implement next-generation reactor designs, they are
very likely to minimize the problems mentioned above.
Lastly, Sovacool et al. assert that our conclusions are
undermined by (a) our citing of the 2008 UNSCEAR report14
for Chernobyl mortality estimates and (b) our alleged nonuse
of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model in our mortality
calculations. They argue that we thereby contravene the
Published: May 22, 2013
Correspondence/Rebuttal
pubs.acs.org/est
© 2013 American Chemical Society 6718 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es402211m | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47, 6718−6719
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140017702 2019-08-31T15:19:37+00:00Z
“prevailing scientiﬁc consensus”. In fact, while we and many
others question the LNT model, our mortality calculations do
employ it, as explicitly stated in the fourth paragraph of our
Results and Discussion section (“...the ‘linear no-threshold’
model used to derive the nuclear mortality factor in Table
1...”).2 As we also clearly state in the caption to our Table 1 and
in the Methods section, our mortality and emission factors are
based on analysis of the entire fuel cycle for each energy source.
Furthermore, Sovacool et al. provide no references for the
“prevailing scientiﬁc consensus” they allude to regarding
Chernobyl deaths. The only relevant source they cite is a
single-authored web posting from the Union of Concerned
Scientists, an organization that is well-known for its long-held
opposition to nuclear power. By contrast, the 2008 UNSCEAR
report that we cite14 represents a rigorous scientiﬁc assessment
performed by expert scientists from 27 countries (including the
countries most aﬀected by the accident).
On a broader note, essentially all credible energy projections
from authoritative sources (e.g., refs 10, 12, 15) indicate that in
order to achieve near-term climate change mitigation targets,
nuclear power will need to make a substantial contribution to
the near-term energy mixeven after factoring in large-scale
energy eﬃciency improvements and renewable energy deploy-
ment. The objections to nuclear power raised by Sovacool et al.
can readily be resolved by next-generation reactors, as we
described in ref 3. We fully acknowledge that renewables and
energy eﬃciency must play an important role, but relying solely
on them to provide all the required GHG emissions reductions
would seriously threaten our chances of success.
Much as Sovacool et al. would prefer to live in a world in
which near-term mitigation targets can be fully realized without
nuclear, in the real world the urgency and scale of the climate
crisis require that we retain and expand all nonfossil electricity
sources, especially those that can directly displace base load coal
plants. The propagation of biased and misleading arguments
against nuclear power by Sovacool et al. and others does a great
disservice to the all-important goal of avoiding dangerous
anthropogenic climate change.
Pushker A. Kharecha*
James E. Hansen
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia
University Earth Institute, 2880 Broadway, New York,
New York 10025, United States
■ AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*Phone: (212) 678-5536; fax: (212) 678-5552; e-mail:
pushker@giss.nasa.gov.
Notes
The authors declare no competing ﬁnancial interest.
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank George Stanford for helpful comments about this
rebuttal.
■ REFERENCES
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Diesendorf, M.; Delucchi, M. Comment on “Prevented Mortality and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear
Power”. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, DOI: 10.1021/es401667h.
(2) Kharecha, P. A.; Hansen, J. E. Prevented mortality and
greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear
power. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47, 4889−4895.
(3) Kharecha, P. A.; Kutscher, C. F.; Hansen, J. E.; Mazria, E.
Options for near-term phaseout of CO2 emissions from coal use in the
United States. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 4050−4062.
(4) Schiermeier, Q. Renewable power: Germany’s energy gamble.
Nature 2013, 496, 156−158, http://www.nature.com/news/
renewable-power-germany-s-energy-gamble-1.12755.
(5) U.S. Energy Information Administration. Germany: overview
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(6) Jacobson, M. Z. Review of solutions to global warming. Energy
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(7) IEA World Energy Statistics and Balances, database; International
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(8) Lenzen, M. Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of
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(9) Lenzen, M. Current state of development of electricity generating
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(10) Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change
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P. R.; Dave, R.; Meyer, L. A., Eds.; Cambridge University Press:
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(13) Boden, T. A.; Marland, G.; Andres, R. J. Global, Regional, And
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Environmental Science & Technology Correspondence/Rebuttal
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es402211m | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47, 6718−67196719


Response to Comment on 'Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power'

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